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Introducing the ‘alt-index’ for measuring the social visibility of scientific research

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Abstract

We propose a new metric called ‘alt-index’, which is analagous to the h-index, but uses altmetrics data to measure both the volume and social media activity of scientific literature. The dataset includes over 1.1 million papers and their associated altmetrics score. A correlation analysis of the h-index and alt-index is conducted at three different levels: field level, source (journal) level, and author level. Our results show a strong positive correlation between the two indexes across all levels. We conclude that the alt-index can be adopted to measure the social activity of publications in situations where there is agreement amongst various social media channels.

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Acknowledgements

Salem Alelyani and Saeed-Ul Hassan are grateful for the financial support received from King Khalid University for this research Under Grant No. 239, 2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Technology University, 346-B, Ferozepur Road, Lahore, Pakistan

    Saeed-Ul Hassan & Sehrish Iqbal

  2. Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Naif R. Aljohani

  3. Center for Artificial Intelligence (CAI), King Khalid University, P.O. Box 9004, Abha, 61413, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Salem Alelyani

  4. College of Computer Science, King Khalid University, P.O. Box 9004, Abha, 61413, Saudi Arabia

    Salem Alelyani

  5. Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixens Vej 8, 2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Alesia Zuccala

Authors
  1. Saeed-Ul Hassan
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  2. Sehrish Iqbal
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  3. Naif R. Aljohani
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  4. Salem Alelyani
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  5. Alesia Zuccala
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alesia Zuccala.

Additional information

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Judit Bar-Ilan (1958–2019), an outstanding scholar and an inimitable friend and colleague.

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Hassan, SU., Iqbal, S., Aljohani, N.R. et al. Introducing the ‘alt-index’ for measuring the social visibility of scientific research. Scientometrics 123, 1407–1419 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03447-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03447-z

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